Do You Like the Naming of Winter Storms? I Say They Make Meteorology Fun!

Winter Storm Brutus is bringing the snow this weekend! Instead of cursing the snowflakes or the cold on Facebook, now we can point our frustration to an arbitrary name! I will feel bad for anyone unfortunate enough to share a name with a storm, however, I hope we keep up the trend of historic villain names!

I was on Twitter browsing the recent news Tweets and at least one Tweeter has already posted this very clever tweet:

So, @weatherchannel named the storm #Brutus? Not sure how or why, but I'll get the first "E tu Brute" out of the way."

@jkmahlum

What name can we expect next? 'C' being the next letter, it's possible my name, Cole, could be it. The prospect is not very likely in my opinion. I'll even make the deal that if it turns out to be Winter Storm Cole, I promise I'll do a snow angel in my birthday suite! Not that anyone wants to see that, I just don't think it will happen.

The naming system was explained on weather.com by Weather Channel meteorologist Tom Niziol:

In addition to providing information about significant winter storms by referring to them by name, the name itself will make communication and information sharing in the constantly expanding world of social media much easier. As an example, hash tagging a storm based on its name will provide a one-stop shop to exchange all of the latest information on the impending high-impact weather system.”

I also propose the naming starts with the letter 'A' each year. I like the idea of starting over because then we can easily count how many winter storms have occurred throughout the year. We could even bet Twinkies on how far in the alphabet we will make it!